Always learning...

 We had a chance to get away for a few days and we decided to visit Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) estate in Spring Green, Wisconsin.  I've known about FLW for many years but never took the time to understand who he was, how he came to be and what was so special about this architect from another time.

This building has a story to tell.  Burned  twice, the scene of tragic murders, and the birth place of the FLW School of Architecture.  An amazing and sometimes bazaar history of a gifted artist and a tangled life.

A lot of glass... with no curtains!

FLW experimented with low ceilings calling it compression, a space to move through but not dwell in.

The bird walk was an unusually long walkway that takes you out over the side of the hill.  I wonder how it was managed during winter with large accumulations of snow and ice...

The Blue Room, surprisingly there are still a few of his apprentices who are living at Taliesin. After he died he allowed his apprentices space to live and go on creating as long as they lived.  The oldest of those survivors who still live here is 101 years old.

The name Taliesin is a Welsh term for a shiny forehead.  The idea being the structure sits upon a hillside and is a beautiful beacon of light and style. This was accomplished in 1911 when the first version was built in my opinion. 

This is Midway barn. Later as the architecture school grew it was converted to a dormitory. The weather vane has a story to tell, but I'll leave that for another day.

The only attribution on a FLW building claiming credit to FLW

One of a kind, to not be seen anywhere else.

Apprentices walked these hallways on their way to the studio

Imagine 70 students sitting with FLW working away at designs for structures. Over a thousand plans, only half were ever built.

The auditoriums theater. FLW and his wife Olgivanna taught art, performed ballet, sketched plays.  All to round out an apprentices world view, and to open their minds to culture and the expression of art in its many forms.

 I never realized Frank Lloyd Wright was so influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Once you know what to look for the influences are all over what became known as Prairie Architecture. He was commissioned to do the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. I stayed there once and although not the original structure, I was impressed at what I thought were Prairie influences, now I know they were simply carry over of a Japanese FLW fusion. Always learning!

Wright was known for his rejection of mechanistic modernism, instead he espoused natural influences and harmony with the environment.  The union with Olgivanna really fueled his late life accomplishments.  The two were made for each other. 

A complex genius with an entire spectrum of both positive and negative interactions with the world.